Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Macadamia nut

SPECIAL NOTE: My mother is celebrating her 80th birthday tomorrow, and she is heading off to Melbourne with her three daughters and her granddaughter for a girls' theatre and shopping expedition. Happy birthday, Mum! (And watch out, Melbourne!!) :-)

I wonder whether today's children get to climb trees like I did when I was a boy. I guess they must, although I'm not in close contact with kids of that age these days, which is rather unfortunate for me. We used to spend hours in trees when I was a kid. We could have entire games that took place in a tree; we used trees as hiding places (essential for avoiding the washing up!); I can even remember the times I used to sit in a tree to read a book. I can distinctly recall the smell of the frangipani that was in our back yard at Annerley. Its flowers were beautiful, and it was a nice safe tree because there were branches quite close to the ground - they were really good for those times when you just wanted to hang upside down and look at the world from a new perspective. But I always thought that the best trees were the ones where you could get a feed while you were up there. Mango trees and Queensland nut (that's what a macadamia was known as when I was a kid) trees were fairly common - many Brisbane back-yards had one or both of these trees. Macadamia nuts originated right here in Queensland, native to the area around Bauple, just south of Maryborough. It wasn't until the trees were exported to the US for the nuts to be harvested and marketed in Hawaii that we Aussies realised their potential, and now there are significant plantations on the eastern coast, as well as a suitable marketing presence. As a kid, I found the Queensland nut an absolute delight, because not only did you have to collect them from the tree, but you also had to crack the hard outer shell to get to the delicious kernel inside. Much like the man in this photo is doing - he is Mr John Waldron from the Tweed Valley, a pioneer of the macadamia industry, and the picture appeared in People magazine in 1957.

(Photo: People Magazine, State Library of Queensland & John Oxley Library; #7719-0001-0003)

1 comment:

Indigenous people of eastern Australia have eaten the native Queensland nut for thousands of years and various tribes knew them as gyndl, jindilli and boombera.

In 1828 Alan Cunningham (of Cunninghams gap fame) was the first European to discover the macadamia. In 1857 German-Australian botanist Ferdinand von Mueller gave this nut the scientific name Macadamia – named after his professional friend Dr. John Macadam, a noted Scottish –Australian scientist and secretary of the Philosophical Institute of Australia.

My great grandfather Joseph Broomfield owned a half acre property in St Lucia Brisbane (circa 1885), and planted macadamia and mango trees which grew very large and abundant.

The nuts would fall and my grandfather (Fred Broomfield his son) would rake up leaves and nuts set the heap on fire and roast the lot then fill a sugar bag full. We grand children had fun in cracking the roasted nuts in a steel vice in a workshop under the house and eat our fill of these scrumptious nuts.

This feast was followed by the grandchildren (all in swimsuits) placed in the family bath eating the sloppy delicious mango fruit from their mango trees.